The man definitely knew how to commit.
“Enjoy,” Trudy said as she headed off.
“So, you were saying that we already have a backstory?” Erik said, his eyes flashing right back to Jenny.
He hadn’t forgotten.
“I’m just saying that we knew each other back in school,” she said. “Case in point, we were close enough that you invited me to your wedding.”
“True,” Erik said with an odd look on his face.
“What?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “That’s a good start. So we were close back in school, and then what? Why didn’t we get together back then?”
Oh no reason. I guess mainly because you didn’t have an obsessive crush on me, like I had on you.
Thankfully, she managed not to blurt that out.
“You decide,” she said instead, lobbing the ball back into his court.
“Because I was going into the service,” he said right away. “And I couldn’t ask you to wait.”
I would have waited.Gladly.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “So, what happened next?”
“I missed you,” he told her, his voice slightly husky, for no reason she could understand.
“I missed you too,” she admitted softly, losing herself in his emerald gaze as the fire crackled beside them.
“As soon as I got out, I looked you up,” he said witha hint of sadness in his eyes. “And I called. And it was like no time had passed, not even a minute. I still wanted to be by your side every second of the day.”
“And I felt the same way,” she told him.
“So I asked you to marry me,” he said.
Her heart was thundering, and she felt her cheeks burning under his gaze, but somehow she couldn’t stop playing this dangerous game.
“I had to think about it,” she said, turning her eyes to the fire and willing herself to hold onto her sanity.
“It killed me to wait, but I gave you space,” he said softly.
She turned back to him, wondering if he was feeling any of the hurricane of confused emotions that battled in her chest.
His eyes met hers and she felt a pull like gravity, a longing so desperate it felt like pain. She felt exactly the way he’d looked in that photo, right before he kissed her…
“I said yes,” she heard herself murmur.
Erik’s hand moved slowly across the table, giving Jenny plenty of time to pull away.
She didn’t.
The sizzle of electricity she felt as his warm fingers wrapped around hers should have troubled her. Instead, it made her feel anchored and whole.
And also guilty.
“Jenny,” he said softly.
